Saturday, 18 December 2010

Considering the BBC's self-proclaimed impartiality, I always find it amusing that they should have never noticed the latent lefty mindset of the vast majority of their Radio 5 guests.

Richard Bacon's show - his own Guardianista views are markedly transparent, most notably in almost screaming at rare right of centre invitee Jon Gaunt and repeatedly cutting him off in the summer, and again in November - seems to have them lined up on some kind of rota at times. It's not a scientific sample, of course, but my experience of his godawful show consists of either his fawning over vacant ideologies put forward by lefty slebs, or arguing with the few who rock up to his studio with opinions which aren't right-on enough. Oh yeah, and his mutual ego massaging with fellow lefty Boyd Hilton can sometimes raise eyebrows ... their disagreement about whether Rush Limbaugh was just insane or very insane was perfectly, err, politically-balanced, I thought.

But then, it would seem the execrable Bacon is only following the general ethos of his channel. For example, The Freedom Association are rightly irked at their 'impartial' BBC treatment at the hands of Alan Davies and privately-educated lefty, David Baddiel this morning.

Davies's quips about TFA founder Norris McWhirter possibly being a friend of Mosley and wondering if he owned a brownshirt didn't help matters, either.

Quite heavy political fare for a radio programme about ... football!

It got me thinking, because I attended TFA's Freedom Zone at the Tory Conference in October and all I saw was a whole load of MPs, MEPs, Councillors, journalists, policy wonks, and at least one Marxist talking about free trade, civil liberties, and freedom of movement. Considering the BNP's manifesto advocates trade restrictions, top-down control and immigration bans, I must have been lax in missing the debates where kicking out the 'fuzzy-wuzzies', protectionism, re-nationalisation, and the introduction of the death penalty for drug dealers were discussed.

Yet they may as well have been, since BBC listeners will now be of the opinion that TFA's founder, Norris McWhirter, was not averse to sticking pins in golliwogs while he was alive, and that TFA - who almost none of the show's listeners will have been aware of before today - don their ties every morning and set off to restore the purity of the 'indigenous' English race.

One could argue that Baddiel and Davies's nonsense was just a bit of larking around and not an attempt at lefty bias, but being tagged as a racist organisation is deeply insulting, very damaging to any reputation, and a demonstrable inaccuracy by a BBC presenter and his politically-naïve guest who was childishly pissed off that McWhirter didn't talk about the Guinness Book of Records show when he visited Baddiel's private school.

Yes, I heard that and thought it was distinctly out of order. My recollection is that the McWhirter twins did genuinely believe in freedom, and their views were the polar opposite of the BNP. And of course Ross was murdered by the IRA for his pains. I'll fire off a complaint tomorrow.

It's a disgraceful rhetorical trick. Don't they think - even as they say it - that equating people who want greater freedom with the Nazis is a tad incongruous? Richard Wilkinson recently did this by claiming that critics of The Spirit Level (of whom there are many of all political persuasions) were of the "far-right".

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/12/15/IncomeGapDoctor/

The aim was to marginalise his opponents with the implicit tag of racism while positioning himself (who is left, and very arguably far-left) in the centre ground. I can only assume that 'far-right' as a term is not well enough defined in law to make such accusations libellous.

Dave Bloodyhell was once part of Newman and Bloodyhell. I don't know what happened to Newman but he was the funny half, in my book.

I doubt complaints will have any effect. Only Approved Complaints work with the British Borg Collective, and complaining about someone being placed anywhere to the right of Stalin are likely to be ignored.

That's why I don't watch anything other than Dr. Who on there, while wishing it was on another channel.

Don’t forget to complain about http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11844169 while you are at it. Perhaps a nadir for the BBC but they have subsequently published an unqualified and possibly insane medic claiming that smoke kills children through walls so who knows?

I am going to disagree with leg-iron on this one and suggest that the BBC cannot ignore complaints. It does help of course if they are constructive and accurate rather than insulting. I know this can be hard when faced with some of the more ridiculous items that the online news editorial team choose to run with, but unless you are constructive, there is no chance that they will ever learn and there is a danger that they might even rebel and report that workshy waste of space Dockrell on a daily basis just to spite what passes for the free world.

David Baddiel on the other hand deserves both barrels for being an ill informed pretentious git so fire away.

"Thank you for contacting us regarding remarks made by David Baddiel about Norris McWhirter and the Freedom Association on The Alan Davies Show on BBC Radio 5 Live broadcast on Saturday 18 December.

"On the show David Baddiel was discussing a television film he has recently made entitled 'The Norris McWhirter Chronicles'. The film centres around a speech that Mr McWhirter made at David Baddiel's school in the 1970s. The young Baddiel had expected a talk about the then popular TV programme 'Record Breakers' and was disappointed that Mr McWhirter's speech was of a political nature. The comments made by David Baddiel were quite clearly his personal description of Mr McWhirter's political allegiances.

"The Alan Davies Show is a live, light hearted, entertainment programme and in this context we are satisfied that no broadcasting guidelines were broken."